Generally, the spinning reels are well known which have a front drag device which adjusts a rotational resistance applied to the spool with respect to the spool shaft or a rear drag device which applies a rotational resistance against rotation of the spool shaft fixedly supporting the spool. The present inventor has proposed a rear drag device having two drag mechanisms which can independently adjust the rotation resistance applied to the spool shaft. Such drag device, as disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 4,591,108, comprises a first drag mechanism formed of the thumb nut screwable with a projection at the rear portion of the reel body and a second drag mechanism formed of a lever. A braking force set by the first drag mechanism is made minimum and is adjustable by the second drag mechanism for increasing the braking force.
Accordingly, such drag device can adjust the above braking force while compensating for the minimum braking force.
Such drag device is provided with a positioning mechanism which can position the adjusting member of the second drag mechanism at a plurality of positions within the adjusting range of the adjusting member, but the positioning mechanism having plural positioning portions is unable to provide an indication of the center of the adjusting range, whereby the first drag mechanism sets the minimum braking force and the second drag mechanism adjusts the braking force in the direction of increasing the minimum braking force set by the first drag mechanism.
As a result, a problem is created in that the minimum braking force set by the first drag mechanism cannot be changed by the second drag mechanism so that the second drag mechanism can both increase or decrease the drag force relative to the value set by the first drag mechanism, so that the braking force can be decreased only by the first drag mechanism.
In brief, the braking force set by the first drag mechanism is adjustable by the second drag mechanism to be increased but not to be decreased. Hence, in such drag device purposely having the second drag mechanism and facilitating adjustment of the braking force set by the first drag mechanism, when a fishing line is subjected to a load overcoming its proof stress, there may nevertheless result a cut the line by minimum braking force set by the first drag mechanism.